Category
Installation & Sizing
Size and install the right system. Read your bill, work out your daily units, and translate them into the right kW, number of panels, inverter and roof layout.
3 videos
Installation & Sizing Videos
0:35Installation & SizingSolar Grounding & Surge Protection: What Most Installs Get Wrong (2026)
Designing a solar system tends to focus on the parts you can see: panels on the roof, an inverter on the wall, maybe a battery in the garage. Grounding and surge protection sit underneath all of it, invisible until the day they're needed. And that's exactly why they get cut, undersized, or left to whoever happens to be holding the drill. The exposure is real. Solar arrays sit in the open, connected to long cable runs and tied into a grid that carries its own disturbances. A single lightning event can reach 30 to 200 kA — enough to destroy an inverter, a battery bank and everything wired between them if that current has no safe path to earth. But direct strikes aren't even the common case. Most damage comes from indirect surges travelling in through the lines from a strike some distance away, or from switching events on nearby equipment. These don't announce themselves. They degrade electronics gradually, and the failure shows up weeks later with no obvious cause. Good protection doesn't make your system generate more energy. It makes it survive. A well-grounded system keeps fault voltages under control and gives excess energy a route away from people and equipment. A poorly grounded one runs its components under constant stress, breaks down insulation faster, and turns a manageable fault into a fire risk. The decisions here aren't complicated, but they are specific. How many electrodes you need scales with system size. What resistance target you're aiming for depends on your region's lightning density. Which SPD types you install depends on where surges are most likely to enter. And your soil — dry, rocky, or clay-rich — quietly determines whether the setup you've installed actually hits the numbers on paper. This guide covers all of it: earthing system types and how to choose between them, conductor and electrode sizing by system capacity, resistance targets and how soil affects them, the difference between Type 1, 2 and 3 surge protection devices and where each belongs, when a full lightning protection system is worth it, and what the whole thing costs — typically 2 to 8% of total installation. It ends with a regional configuration table so you can see what a comparable system looks like in Europe, South Asia, North America, Africa, Australia and Latin America.
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0:35Installation & SizingHow Many Solar Panels Do I Need? The 2026 Sizing Formula
Ask three installers what size system you need and you'll get three different answers — usually before anyone has looked at your electricity bill. That's backwards. Your bill already contains everything needed to work out the right system size, and the math takes about two minutes. Get it wrong in one direction and you're still importing expensive units from the grid. Get it wrong in the other and you've paid for panels that will never earn back. Here's how to size it properly, with a worked example. Read your bill, find your daily units, and translate them into the right number of panels and inverter size — the 2026 way to avoid over- or under-buying.
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0:35Installation & SizingRooftop Solar Layout Mistakes That Cost You Energy (2026 Guide)
Most people spend weeks comparing panel brands and then hand the roof over to an installer without a word about layout. It's the wrong order. Orientation, tilt, shading and string grouping decide how much energy your system actually produces — and unlike the panels, getting these right costs nothing extra. A well-planned array on mid-range panels will out-produce a badly planned array on premium ones. Here's how to plan yours before anyone starts marking the roof. A smart rooftop layout beats a premium panel brand. Orientation, tilt, shade mapping and string grouping — planned properly for 2026.
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